This is the journal of one of Pessoa's many alternate personages. This is the documentation of an everyday, poetical philosopher. The book actually feThis is the journal of one of Pessoa's many alternate personages. This is the documentation of an everyday, poetical philosopher. The book actually felt more like poetry than anything else. It is absolutely beautiful.

"I'm handed faith like a sealed package on a strange-looking platter and am expected to accept it without opening it. I'm handed science, like a knife on a plate, to cut the folios of a book whose pages are blank. I'm handed doubt, like dust inside a box - but why give me a box if all it contains is dust?"...more

I don't typically read that much poetry, but Charles Wright is one that's stuck with me. All his books are beautiful and compelling; this one really iI don't typically read that much poetry, but Charles Wright is one that's stuck with me. All his books are beautiful and compelling; this one really impacted me more than the others. His poetry is abstract, spiritual, and engaged with nature. Reading his words feels like effortless meditation, and there's much wisdom in his insight, observation, & feeling.

Here's one of many amazing passages in the book:"Inside the self is another self like a black hole / Constantly dying, pulling parts of our lives / Always into its fluttering light, / anxious as Augustine / For redemption and explanation: / No birds hang in its painted and polished skies, no trees / Mark and exclaim its hill lines, / no grass moves, no water: / Like souls looking for bodies after some Last Judgment, / Forgotten incidents rise / from under the stone slabs / Into its waxed air; / Grief sits like a toad with its cheeks puffed, / Immovable, motionless, its tongue like a trick whip / Picking our sorrows off, our days and our happiness; / Despair, with its three mouths full, / Dangles our good occasions, such as they are, in its gray hands, / Feeding them in, / medieval and naked in their ecstasy; / And Death, a tiny o of blackness, / Waits like an eye for us to fall through its retina, / A minor irritation, / so it can blink us back."

Wow! And Wright continues with equal intensity on every page of the book. I recommend all books by Charles Wright....more